The Life And Times of John Solart
by John Solart
Summary: Nearly 500 years of living will make anyone go crazy and want to die. John Solart knows that well, having been hoping to die for more than a hundred years now. Teaching those less gifted in the Dark Arts seemed like the only way out and now he waits for his students to come up with a way to kill his Dark Lord alter ego. Meanwhile the only thing to do is reminisce.
1. Prologue

Welcome to The Life And Times Of John Solart, an original set of short stories in the Harry Potter universe. The topic at hand is Mr John Solart, a wizard from the 17th century and his struggle with immortality. The storytelling will be nonlinear and features glimpses into John's previous lifetimes, for better or for worse. I will be writing these shorts intermittently when inspiration strikes and I feel like it. No strict plot is to be expected.

 **Warning:** The main character is essentially a sociopath. Expect anything.

 **Disclaimer:** Everything belongs to J. K. Rowling, including my hair.

* * *

John Solart the Original sat strapped to a metal chair in a blank white cell. The day had been long and full of idiocy but finally his ex-students had emerged victorious against the Dark Lord that had appeared on the gates of Solart Academy of the Arte early this morning. Smart was indeed in deviously short supply when the students John himself had handpicked from hundreds of prospective students based on their intelligence and will could not connect the sudden disappearance of their Headmaster to the new Dark Lord.

It did not matter much, John had managed to get rid of the few most annoying students and staff members at his academy and finally gotten overpowered by the rest once they realised after killing him thrice that he was truly immortal and a change of tactics was needed. Destroying the dance studio his Vice-Principal had built on school grounds had been a true delight. Now it was time to wait for his students to rack their brains on ways to permanently kill the Dark Lord and John just needed to wait for them to do it.

He had plenty of time to think now. Not that he was really all that helpless in his imprisonment, actually he could break out any moment but that was hardly needed. Thinking back on his life, more specifically his lives, John found his resolve to die and be finally rid of himself stengthened tenfold. He'd lived far too long and not by his own choice. Besides he hated himself at times: Who the fuck thought up a plan to train bright witches and wizards in the Dark Arts in order to, in the end, turn against them as a Dark Lord to force them to kill him but forgot to think of a name for the Dark Lord persona?

John Solart, that's who. Now also known as Dark Lord Esophagus. Thinking of a good name while staring at the Vice-Principal had been surprisinly hard, good thing the man had a huge Adam's apple. No, wait, bad thing.

Anyway, moving on. Too many lives had passed by, too many times John had had his conciousness copied to the next of his kin in line thanks to his son's ambition combined with a lackluster aptitude for soul magic and dark rituals.

 _Should've taught the bastard better_ , John thought bitterly, idly trying to remember why he had not just told all the family secrets to his son almost 500 years earlier. Or killed him for that matter. Either way would've probably rid him of his problem. Unfortunately he had no idea. The events of his past lives were quite hazy the further back they were and his original life was the haziest.

Sighing out loud he cast his thoughts to the past, trying to remember all that had been. Somewhere, a clock ticked.


	2. Better Call Death

**Disclaimer:** It's all in the Rowling, despite what Lord Tutu expects.

* * *

John Solart had seen his death approaching quite a few times. Most of the times it had been old age or a well-placed curse from some pissed wand-waver. A couple of times he'd finished himself off just to get it over with. Then there was that memorable time when a man dressed up as Bugs Bunny had sliced his neck. He'd never seen it coming and to this day had no idea why it had happened.

This was one of those times, John could tell. He was weak from blood loss and even though most of his assailants, wearing ridiculous masks as always, were down for the count, the remnants still kept attacking. Sooner or later they'd wear him down. John pondered briefly if publicly comparing the current Dark Lord -hopeful to a troll ballerina with a homoerotic passion for dresses had been a bad idea in the end.

The sound of apparition roused him from the pleasant thought of ballet leotards to take a look towards his opponents from behind his cover. The masked marauders had ceased their curse slinging and seemed to be giving space to someone entering the fray from behind.

"Oh, lovely, the ballerina is here! I've been waiting!" John yelled, sending a blindingly powerful spell at the new arrival. The spell sapped nearly all of his remaining power but was well worth it. The Dark Lord was wholly incapable of casting a shield strong enough to hold the spell. As the spell hit his midsection the Dark Lord's eyes went wide from fear of being blasted to orbit and then even wider from surprise when his outfit transfigured to a pink tutu, complete with matching ballet shoes.

Not even waiting for the spell to hit John proceeded to morph his own clothes to a matching male ballet uniform and started bouncing towards the Dark Lord with graceful leaps while calling out his final wish: "Let us dance the Swan Lake!"

Hoping against hope that his opponent was a fan of ballet John was most disappointed when he saw his opponent's face morph from surprise and confusion to pure rage. Within a fraction of a second the Dark Lord's pointed his wand at John's chest and yelled: " _Avada Kedavra_!"

Just as John was finishing his entry and was about to bound next to the Dark Lord to join him in the finale of Swan Lake the spell hit him square in the chest. Instead of dropping like a fly John simply landed next to his dance partner with a confused look. Noting that he had not died and had his being copied onto the next in line John decided on his best course of action.

After a couple of heated minutes of dancing a ballet choreography of sorts, only with less dancers and more curses, John finally found himself pinned down by a tutu-wearing Dark Lord seething in rage but unable to ignore the temptation of knowledge on surviving the Killing Curse.

"Tell me before I torture you into insanity, why won't you die?" the Ballet Lord demanded from John, spittle flying from his mouth in a way not fitting of a fine lady.

"I find myself just as baffled as you, but may I say it was a delight to dance with you!" John smiled. All of the Dark Lord's attempts at untransfiguring his robes had been in vain so far and John hoped things would be so for quite a while. He'd charmed them with a rather powerful permanent sticking charm during their dance routine.

"Don't lie to me! _Crucio!_ "

John simply stared lazily at his torturer as his body began to smoke. Physical pain was, well, painful but for some reason since he gained immortality his soul had been totally disconnected from the pain of the Cruciatus. In time the Dark Lord let go of the spell and stared at John quite unable to speak.

"I'm sorry but I honestly don't know, Lord Tutu, this has never happened to me before. I wish I could get an explanation but I doubt anyone here knows either." A small silence followed. "I didn't really think so. Probably the only one to know would be Death himself and I'm not sure how to summon him. I do have an idea though."

The Dark Lord, ears a little red from his new title, regarded John silently for a moment and then asked the important question: "You think you can summon Death?"

"Yeah, I think so. He's not quite so adverse to making house calls, after all."

"Show me."

A few minutes and some unavoidable deaths later John was placing the finishing touches on a soon-to-be magical artifact, currently just an old rusty spoon. The rusty spoon in question had been used to kill a man, to destroy a soul and to feed a Dementor, now the only thing that remained was for it to house a soul. The soul in question would come from MacKinnon who'd been dumb enough to raise his hand when John asked for a volunteer.

"If you would, please," John offered to Lord Tutu.

" _Avada Kedavra,_ " was the only response, and John whipped his wand towards the now-corpse, catching a wispy form and fed it into the spoon. An eery glow began to emanate from the object.

"Now I think this should be attuned enough to make the call," John explained, picking up the object. He noted it felt quite similar to the skin of a rotten banana, which made quite a lot of sense in the end. Nobody liked rotten bananas. Raising the spoon to his ear with the fat end close to his mouth, John spoke out: "Hello, Mr. Death, would you be available for a quick talk?"

He patiently waited while next to him Lord Tutu's jaw had slackened to a mouth-open-wide face of bafflement. "You are? Great, we're at… Oh, you know already? Yeah, I guess I did send quite a few idiots your way. Yeah, sorry about that, always keeping you busy. Thanks, I appreciate that. You too, see you soon, bye!" He hung up the spoon and turned to Tutu: "Death said he'll be here in a jiffy."

As the Dark Lord was about to answer a flash of light alerted both of them to Death's arrival. Death looked just as one would expect, a bored looking man measuring in at just barely 3 feet, slowly nibbling on a carrot. He had high cheekbones with bright red cheeks and a potato-like nose above a small mouth. He was wearing saggy old pants and a hand-me-down jumper with the text "New Jersey 1947 Outdoors" on it.

"Sorry about the wait. And the carrot, I guess. I was just snacking when you called." Death explained, looking boredly at Lord Tutu, then turning towards John. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

"Well, Tutu here tried to kill me with the Killing Curse a few minutes ago and I didn't die, like I've usually done. It just kind of tickled a little. Now we were wondering why on earth would that be, I've never been immune to the curse before." John explained, animatedly waving his hands as a kind of pantomime of what had transpired.

"Oh, well that's easy. Your soul is not in your body anymore so of course the curse does nothing," Death said exasperated. "How daft are you, really?"

"Oh. Where has my soul gone off then?"

"Last I heard of him he was taking a vacation in Bali. The annoying bugger keeps calling me all the time."

"What?" Lord Tutu had finally gotten his voice back.

"Like I said, you dumb broad, he's in Bali!" Death spat.

"But what, how's that possible. And can you tell me how to become immortal?" Tutu continued, oblivious to the annoyed look Death was giving him.

"Yeah, sure, let me show you how. Dumb broad..." Death muttered, taking the Dark Lord by the hand and disappearing just as John raised his hand to wave goodbye.

Looking around him John saw that quite a few of Tutu's henchmen were staring at him, expecting some kind of explanation or at least reassurance that their Lord would be coming back. John simply shrugged: "He really shouldn't have asked Death for immortality. Really, what did he expect to happen?"

As no answer was forthcoming from the now lordless sheeple, John shrugged again and apparated his way towards Bali. He had some soul searching to do.


End file.
